Monday, March 29, 2010

On Saturday, March 27th, the Tea Party movement descended on Harry Reid's hometown of Searchlight, NV to protest. Subsequent to that, Andrew Breitbart was recorded on a phone conversation talking about how he confronted a man who was mis-directing people away from Searchlight. He also spoke about the Tea Party buses being hit with eggs and then later being approached by police after reports that he - Breitbart - actually threw the eggs.

Unlike the failure of Jesse Jackson Jr. and the countless other video recorders on-hand March 21st to verify the claims of Democrats John Lewis and Emanuel Cleaver, that they were the subjects of racial slurs and spitting, Breitbart makes his case with ONE camera.

When the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 this past January in favor of Citizens United against the FEC, Barack Obama didn't like it much. He voiced his displeasure directly at the Supreme Court Justices during the State of the Union. The argument that seemed to resonate with a majority of the public was that the ruling enabled big corporate interests, both foreign and domestic, to significantly alter elections.

That's not what this case was about........AT ALL. And there is a reason that Barack Obama is concerned. Politico reports that Obama is making campaign finance a huge issue this spring.

Aides say that with the momentum from the most complex domestic bill to pass Congress in 45 years, Obama now will push Congress to close campaign-finance loopholes opened by the Citizens United case…

People need to start asking why he is so concerned about this.

In any event, Obama's fight to render the Citizens United decision null and void took two significant blows on Friday. The New York Times reported:

WASHINGTON — Two federal courts here issued decisions on Friday addressing the impact of Citizens United, January’s big Supreme Court campaign finance ruling, on a new issue — whether the government may constitutionally restrict the size of contributions to groups that spend money to support political candidates.

One court said that individual contributions to advocacy groups known as 527s may not be limited. Another said that contributions to political parties can, though it said it was aware the resulting playing field might not be a level one.

Stephen M. Hoersting, a lawyer for the winning side in the first case, said the ruling represented a logical and welcome extension of Citizens United.

“The court affirmed,” Mr. Hoersting said in a statement, “that groups of passionate individuals, like billionaires — and corporations and unions after Citizens United — have the right to spend without limit to independently advocate for or against federal candidates.”

It would appear that the "loopholes" Obama is so concerned about closing seem to be getting closed without his help or intervention. Something else is afoot here. People need to step back and really take a look at why Mr. Obama might be so sensitive on this subject.

At the heart of the Citizens United case and why it was brought is a documentary film that was produced by a nonprofit organization which was subsequently not permitted to be advertised or marketed because of McCain Feingold. Citizens United produced a film called, Hillary: The Movie.

It was incredibly damaging to Hillary as her primary with Obama was starting to kick into gear in early 2008. With all of the baggage in Obama's past, a similar documentary about him could make Hillary look like a piker. Couple that with the fact that November 2010 has the makings of November 1994 on steroids. Obama is very concerned about groups like Citizens United tapping into that Tea Party anger and creating a buzz across the nation about a documentary that could do great political damage to not only Obama but to the entire Democratic party.

If Obama was so concerned about loopholes, he might look at those two decisions in New York on March 26th as evidence they're getting closed without him. I think it's safe to say he's not happy with either decision.

The man charged with threatening Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA) is named Norman LeBoon and he has apparently been making hundreds of YouTube videos that threaten various entities and individuals. He allegedly told the authorities he made over 2000. While the video "LeBoon" made threatening Cantor has understandably been removed, here is one that is still viewable. In it, "LeBoon" threatens YouTube employees and claims that YouTube belongs to him.

Republican whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) came out forcefully last week and singled out Democrat leaders for "fanning the flames" by exploiting threats to Democratic members of congress for political gain. To prove his point - remaining silent would have been worse - Cantor announced that a bullet had been shot into the window of his campaign office. His reason for doing so was to make it known that threats come with the job and are not directed at one party exclusively, as the Democratic leadership was implying.

The left actually decided to debunk Cantor's claims not by denying a bullet had entered his office through the window but by pointing to the police report, which said the angle of entry was from top, down. This apparently meant that someone shot a gun in the air and it happened to come down inside Cantor's office. How foolish of him to bring that up as an example.

Now we learn that a man has been arrested for posting a threat to Cantor and his family on YouTube. Take a look at how the extremely liberal Salon reports it:

Cantor made a real hash of it last week, but these kinds of things do show that he had at least a partial point: Though Democrats are now playing up the threats they've faced since passing healthcare reform, it's also true that politicians and other public figures have to deal with this stuff on a fairly regular basis, even without the anger from tea partiers.

Don't look now but could it be that even the leftwing bloggers are being forced to confront the stubborn truth? Not so fast. Note the implication in the last sentence. The left is bound and determined to make sure those darned Tea Partiers are guilty somehow.